18 - Sexuality under Attack Now

Summary

This chapter discusses why sexuality has become the site of a new “Cold War” and what are its new elements. Now, a fully-fledged illiberal program is offering an alternative to liberal cultural, social, and political politics. The new political actors fighting for redefining sexuality are capturing states using democratic or quasi-democratic methods to introduce new forms of governance as alternatives to liberal values. The chapter analyses the roots of and actors in these attacks. The example of Russia shows how the recent and ongoing war against Ukraine has changed previous assumptions and made alliances and allegiances very clear. The soft power of Putin”s Russia has been instrumental in the fight for “traditional values” as an inexpensive and effective political tool to undermine liberal values and the European Union. This matters not only because Russia has created an alternative, illiberal political order to liberal human rights over the past decade, but also because it has become an international actor, financing local and international NGOs to disrupt and undermine liberal states” values and activities around the world. The chapter closes with discussing how the appropriation of liberal values combined with emptying their meanings to legitimize a new war of Russia shows that we are really facing a turning point in our history.